Lux Perpetua
by Mary Ruth Keller
Summary: The only series finale I'd like to see, or, why watching too much early X-F is a bad thing.


Georgetown Hospital  
Washington, D.C.  
Monday, May 6, 2002  
4:07 pm

Fox Mulder felt sensation return slowly. First, there were sounds, not painful ones, just noise with no sensibility. Then, the random syllables formed into words, real English with meaning, spoken by a voice he could never forget. He was somehow aware much time had passed since he had heard it last. His partner was enunciating in that precise, controlled phrasing she used for speaking into an autopsy microphone.

"Yes. Check the records under radiation-induced mutation. There should be parallels with some of our earlier cases. Um-hum. Check the DNA from the Tooms case. You'll find - Oh? How is he doing?"

Mulder felt the pressure of her hand on his arm as she bent over him. His nose told him wherever he was, she had just been out in the field. She smelled clean, but the slight fragrance of her hair spray was missing. He suspected that, if he could open his eyes to look down, he would see she was still wearing those hiking boots that were a size too large for her.

"His vitals are good. Strong. There was no evidence of severe damage when he wandered out of the woods. It's just a matter of time before his body's had enough rest and he decides to wake up and join the rest of us."

Her hand shifted away, only to land, this time, on his forehead. He heard her indulgent little chuckle at the same instant as the click from her cell phone. She'd probably played her doctor card to keep it in here with all the monitors.

"Scully." He was surprised to hear himself whisper her name.

"Mulder?" He felt the palm of her hand encircling his chin. "You coming back to us?"

He found it easy to open his eyes. His partner looked thinner than when he had seen her last. But, she also seemed, it was difficult to find the word, more *content* than he remembered her being in years. "Yeah." He tried to raise his hand, but she had already grasped it.

"Don't try to move too fast, you've been unconscious for a week now."

She seemed *more* than content. His partner was distinctly at ease. As more memories flooded back, he seemed to know the reason why. "Motherhood suits you, Scully."

"What?" She had cocked her head at him. "What are you talking about, Mulder? Motherhood?"

He let his gaze travel down to her stomach. "But, I thought... William?"

She chewed the corner of her lip. "William who? I'm sorry, Mulder, but my father and yours are both dead. William?" She thumped to the foot of the bed, then flipped through his charts. "We may need to do these MRI's again."

Mulder pushed himself up against the pillows before his partner could reach his shoulder to restrain him. "But we had had a child, Scully, I remember."

She cocked her head. "We what? Mulder, what are you *talking* about? How could we have had a child?" She gripped his left eyebrow, pushing it upward so she could flick a light in the hazel. "I don't have any ova, first of all, and we've never, ah, well..." She straightened. "I wonder."

He twisted on the mattress. "But, you asked for a contribution for in vitro fertilization! I remember that distinctly."

"Hum?" From the distant tone, he knew she was considering something, until a little sigh told him her thoughts were now ordered. "Now, why would I do that? Remember poor little Queequeg. I don't have the time to raise a child, even if I had ova. Imagine what they'd make of it at the Hoover Building. It's bad enough we do what we do."

"But, you asked to be reassigned to Quantico. Agent Doggett runs the X-Files now."

"Quantico? I haven't worked there since before I was taken." Her eyes narrowed. "No, there's no one there - "

"He was a little bit in love with you, Scully. There was another agent there, Reyes, who was a little bit in love with him. And an Agent Folmer, who was a little bit - "

"Mulder! You make it sound like Hoover Place, 90210! Success at the Bureau demands dedicated professionals, not hormonally-crazed teenagers in expensive suits." She crossed her arms. "So, what were *you* doing in the midst of all this madness?"

He rubbed his forehead, somehow missing tangling his fingers up in the sensor cables. "I had, I think, quit the FBI and disappeared. For your safety."

"You? Quit the FBI? Walk away from the X-Files? That's- Oh, Mulder." She pulled the metal hospital chair up to sit before grasping his hand again. "You have to understand, you were taken away over a year ago. There's no telling what was done to your memories once the aliens spirited you off. They must have fed a whole different life into your mind. They could have made you walk away from the X-Files, resign from the Bureau, or something equally strange." She cocked her head. "A child?"

He nodded fiercely. "The aliens were after him. He had superpowers. You gave birth in a cabin and then gave him up to…" He stopped at the upward flick of her green-blue eyes.

"Oh, Mulder, I'm sorry, the Nativity in some strange mash-up with Kal-El?" Both ginger eyebrows arched as she studied the EEG for a moment, then nodded. "If they knew anything about you, they wouldn't have done that. They would have given you back your sister and set you two off in some Scooby van on a new life chasing monsters together."

He opened his mouth to protest, before offering his agreement with his best hang-dog pout. He had forgotten how well she knew him.

She squeezed his fingers gently. "I've heard similar stories from many of the returned abductees. They must have programmed you with some standard set of 'happy' memories. You told me about your dreams when the Consortium operated on your brain. Remember? Deep Throat was alive in that one."

Mulder watched her studying him. He guessed she was mentally tallying up the number and sequence of tests she would want him put through. "Okay." He found a tiny smirk was forming. "Did I hear you say 'the aliens spirited', 'returned abductees'?" He tried to lean toward her, but found that too much of an effort. "Finally considering those extreme possibilities, Scully?"

One cheek creased. "You'll find a lot of things have changed in your absence, Mulder." He resigned himself to being tucked in carefully before her cell phone rang. He fell asleep as she was explaining to her caller that the flight test range needed three day's advance notice before the prototype could be taken out. Somewhere.

-o-0-o-

J. Edgar Hoover Building  
Washington, D.C.  
Monday, May 13, 2002  
9:02 am

Mulder found it odd to be here again. Just seven days ago, he could barely walk to the bathroom, but today he had taken the Metro in to work, just like old times. He had, over Scully's protests, checked himself out of the hospital, then she had driven him home to Alexandria. It was obvious his partner had been here before him. His apartment was clean, his refrigerator stocked with vegetables and fruit. The fish appeared to be the same ones from before he left, which meant that she had taken care of them, or had looked high and low for identical replacements.

"Agent Mulder!" The guard at the front desk stepped out to reach for his hand. "Good to see you back." He smiled as he clipped a temporary badge on his lapel. "AD Scully restarted all your paperwork, but that takes time. You'll have to have a new photograph taken."

At the quick clicks of the walk he knew belonged to only one person, Mulder looked over. "There you are."

She touched his arm. "Why didn't you call me, Mulder? I was expecting to give you a ride in today."

"I wanted to try this on my own." He chuckled at her impatient little sigh. "I only rode to Glenmont and back before I got here."

Scully cocked her head. "Mulderrr." After walking to the elevators, she pressed the triangular button with the peak at the top before she turned to him. "You didn't, did you?"

He snorted. "Even if I'd been away for a decade, I wouldn't get lost on the subway, Scully. Where are we going? To see Skinner?"

She sent him an odd little glance. "Eventually. Right now, I'm taking you up to the X-Files offices."

He stepped back for her as the doors slid open. "Up? Did I miss something here?"

She tipped her chin toward him. "Just you wait, G-man."

The car came to a rest when the News Gothic '4' was illuminated overhead. Once they exited, they were stopped by an earnest young agent waving a Palm Pilot. "AD Scully, we need to talk about the meeting you've scheduled at NIH next week. There's a conflict with - Oh, Agent Mulder! So nice to finally meet you."

Mulder found his hand being pumped with vigor. "Likewise." He tapped his partner's shoulder. "Scully, this is the second time I've heard 'AD' in front of your name. What's that all about?"

She swept her arm in the young agent's direction. "Fox Mulder, meet Tom Jensen. He's a geneticist working with us on cross-species mutation and genomic analysis." She stepped away from both of them just as a pair of female agents, one African-American, the other Asian, joined them.

"AD Scully." The African-American woman barely glanced at Jensen before handing the ginger-haired pathologist a blueprint. "We've tested the aerodynamics of the wing-shape as measured from the latest recordings, and they appear to be an improvement over the set on the prototype."

Mulder watched his partner read the document over carefully. "Scully?"

She handed the sheet to the Asian agent. "Does this agree with the models you ran?"

The raven-haired woman, more compact than even his partner, replied so softly Mulder had to lean forward to hear her. "Yes, it does. We had to correct for wind speed and direction, but, it appears it will work in the upper atmosphere." She raised her dark eyes to his puzzled gaze. "So glad you are well, Agent Mulder. We were worried you would never be returned."

His partner introduced the African-American as Ariana Lytton, the Asian as Ming Chen, rattling off a string of degrees Mulder knew he would never remember. Both had PhD's in engineering, so he'd have to call them Doctor. Or Agent. Or both. He'd ask Scully which was correct later.

"So, are you ready?" Her words cut into his thoughts.

"Ready?" He repeated carelessly.

"To see your office." Scully was wearing a mysterious little smile that unnerved him.

He pushed his fears away with a wave of his hand. "Lead on, Watson."

After she escorted him to a door with a glass inset bearing his name, she twisted the handle before turning back to face him. "After you."

Once he had stepped through cautiously, he stopped. His partner had painstakingly recreated his basement office here, or, as painstakingly as her perpetual orderliness would tolerate. He waited for her to pass through before closing the door behind them. Once she had settled into the creaking wooden chair in front of his desk, he strolled over to her. He rearranged his name plate and a stack of case files positioned on the oak, half-sat on the front edge, then bent over her as he crossed his arms. "Okay, spill. What's with all those people?" He poked her shoulder as he smirked. "What's with the AD Scully business?"

She smoothed her skirt with both palms before she looked up at him. "There was a videotape of your abduction, Mulder. Clear, perfect, better than anything we had to date. I watched it." She folded her hands in her lap. "That was the start, if you must know."

He walked around the desk to slump into his chair. "Start?"

She straightened. "It was proof, Mulder. Unquestionable, incontrovertible proof. Director Skinner and I took it to Director Freeh. We had to have answers, and if he wasn't going to back us, we were prepared to go to the media with it. Fortunately, he did. We finally had the Bureau's resources at our disposal, and I was determined not to waste them."

He rubbed his eyes. "So, what about Doggett?"

She leaned forward. "Doggett? I told you when you woke up, there is no - "

He nodded. "Yes. Agent John Doggett. He was assigned to look into my - What?"

She had cocked her eyebrow at him. "It's nice to know the aliens worked your memories of the Clarence Thomas hearings into your alternate life."

"So, no Monica Reyes?" He watched her shake her head. "Okay. No William, no Doggett, no Reyes. I take it Kersch isn't a problem, either?"

She sent him a broad, relaxed smile. "No. As I said, I wasn't going to let this opportunity go to waste. Director Skinner and I immediately demanded the budget for the X-Files increase by a factor of ten. I've brought on experts in photogrammetry, genetics, forensics, engineering, archaeology, exobiology." She pointed to his computer monitor. "If you power your screen up, you'll see a layout of our Group's organization."

He studied the charts before he looked up at her face as she was bending over him. "Our Group? Yours and Skinner's?"

She straightened to lean against the desk. "No. Yours and mine. AD Skinner remains our superior, but he has a political scientist and a diplomat to assist him."

"What?" He found his feet. "A diplomat? Scully, what's going on here?"

She pressed her palm down on his shoulder. "You'd better be ready for some extreme possibilities yourself, Mulder."

He inhaled deeply as he sat, waiting until she settled on the wooden chair.

"While we were gearing up the group, I was approached by a contact, a source, who claimed to know where you were and who had you." She was smoothing her skirt again. "He had information about the remaining members of the Consortium that allowed us to arrest them. All of them. Krycek, Marita, Strughold, all of them."

Mulder sighed. "You keep using the past tense, Scully. This source?"

She twisted on her seat. "He turned out to be an alien, a law enforcement agent like us. The Consortium had allied themselves with a rogue group of outlaws from his home world. He was tracking them down and attempting to bring them to justice." She waved her hand at the glass door. "Those prototypes you heard abut? He gave us the plans, showed us how to build the machines and develop the technology to make extra-solar travel possible. He helped us catch our criminals in return for us helping him catch his."

"So, where was he all the time *we* were trying to bring the Consortium to justice, Scully?"

"Waiting. Watching. When it was just the two of us, Mulder, there was no way we could bring our enemies down on our own. But, with the Group, there was a critical mass that he felt would be successful."

He leaned forward. "But, he's dead, isn't he?"

She walked around the oak to tap a few keys. "Yes. In a raid on one of the facilities in the Cascades. The abductees they were taking were never leaving the planet. They couldn't because the distances in space are just too vast. They were being hidden in secret locations around the world. He was killed in a cave-in while we were attempting to break into one of them. But that was what woke you, and several dozen others. It took weeks to round every one of you up in that terrain." She bent over him again. "You escaped us to the very last, G-man."

He chuckled as he turned to his computer. "So, I have a lot of reading to do, don't I?"

She smiled. "Yes. Take your time. I'll be in and out to answer any questions." She patted his shoulder once before heading to the door. "Catch you up for lunch?"

"Yeah, sure." Engrossed as he was in his reading, he failed to hear the six queries shouted at his partner as she stepped away.

-o-0-o-

J. Edgar Hoover Building  
Washington, D.C.  
Monday, May 20, 2002  
11:17 am

"Scully!" Mulder bellowed out his door. "Scully! Come check this out!"

She extricated herself from a group of agents to join him. "Yes?"

He was pushing down his sleeves. "This mine you said was abandoned? I think I was there for part of the time I was gone. The layout, it seems familiar somehow."

She clicked through several computer screens. "Okay. We can have Agents Railford and Meeks go on ahead with the sensors. They're following up on a lead about thirty miles from there. Let me make some calls."

Once she was finished, she turned to him. "Glad to have you back, Mulder. It's been a long, long time since we've had your insights to guide us." She held his gaze for a significant moment.

He bent into her face, then walked over to hold the door for her. "You know, I remember an old X-File about giant bats roosting in caves not too far from there."

She stepped through ahead of him. "Giant bats? What do they do? Steal sheep? Drink the blood of cows?"

He touched her back. "All that, and they have chameleon tendencies. They can blend in anywhere, which is why they're so successful at escaping probing and prodding by biologists. Think of it, a new species."

They dodged a group of agents, Mulder shielding his partner from detection long enough to escape.

Once they were in the elevator, she snorted. "Giant camouflaged blood-sucking bats. Oh, Mulder."

He punched the button. "Hey, I'm doing you a favor getting you out of that office, Scully."

Finis

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Finished 01/26/02. Released to XFCreative/ATXC 01/28/02.

The denizens of the Endies Board appreciated these fevered thoughts so much I thought I'd float them in a bit wider waters. Surprisingly, this is just as current to X-F in '20 as in '02. Go figure.

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End file.
